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Pepping Up Windows
PhairOh writes "Toms Hardware has an article about improving Windows with free and Open Source Software. It features everything from the obvious like Gimp and OpenOffice and also some interesting choices like Virtuawin. From the article: 'The average Windows user tends to be less than satisfied with Windows. And that's no surprise, either, given the rather woeful state of its default applications.'"
My older brother is a 100% MS man. He spend about half of our visits together telling me how I have wasted the last 10 years working with Linux. On one of his last visits he saw me switching virtual windows in X and thought that looked like a cool app. I searched the web and Virtuawin. When he came over I installed it on his laptop and he has reported that his productivity has increased. I don't know what he is using for a metric, but he likes the idea of switching windows to applications that aren't buried behind muliple instances of IE.
I guess there are still some ways that *NIX can influence Microsoft, but at this point everyone is using and recycling each other ideas. Few companies are actually building new and interesting interfaces.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
I get the impression that there are more users who actually _like_ (not just put up with) Mac OS X (or maybe even GNU/Linux) than there are who actually _like_ (not just put up with) Windows. Anyone here actually like Windows? I'm not trolling, just want to know. If you do, what do you like about it?
I've installed Cygwin and Emacs to my Windows install at work. I was looking for some sort of grep functionality a while back and decided Cygwin was the way to go since I also get a BASH shell and piping, too. I also installed emacs a long time ago. It's the Emacs for Windows, not the one for Cygwin. Both of those have increased my productivity tremendously without needed to install a full-blown Linux distro on the box.
Media Player Classic (open source). Who needs WMP anyway? :)
IrfanView (freeware) for image browsing and very basic manipulation, like gamma correction or applying photoshop filters
Notepad serves me just fine. Paint is crap. Wordpad works fine as well.
Windows gives alot of room for 3rd party developers to make money off of the lack of default applications. There's room for improvement and so people make those improvements and then are able to earn a living off of it. If the OS were to come with 4 copies of every imaginable type of software it would come on too many discs, be bloated, and leave no room for a developer to make money from their work. Yay linux! Reducing the software developer to a novelty act for decades.
Rather than messing with the GIMP on Windows, I prefer to use Paint.NET for my light graphics needs. It's not as powerful as Photoshop or the GIMP, but it is quite nice and available under an MIT license.
I've never used Virtuawin, but I have been using Virtual Dimension and have been really impressed with it. It integrates almost seamlessly with windows and is decently configurable. Another option to consider if (like me) you feel hindered without virtual desktops.
I'm just one datapoint, but I sure hated Windows. I knew it, and I used it for ages, but I also fought it and struggled with it, watched it trash my data, fill my hard disk with clutter, cover my desktop with pop-up windows and spyware.
I tried Linux for half a year, really tried to like it. Ended up with a Mac, and now I like using a computer again.
Heh, and Windows is even worse once you've used OS X.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
Also check out Konqueror's "File Size View". It provides a graphical view of space used where files and folders are represented as nested boxes, with the size of the box proportional to the amount of storage consumed. A folder that consumes 50% of the space will cover 50% of the Konq window.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Let me add yet another recommendation - I really like Steffen Gerlach's (free) Scanner. It shows disk useage as a simple pie-graph, and lets you drill down to directories, delete stuff, open an explorer window, etc.
I'm quite impressed with it anyways, and it comes with source if you're into that.
Not to pimp my own site too much, but the entire site is dedicated to free tools to improve Windows. It includes many of the tools just listed here. nedwolf.com
Best Windows Freeware
Yes. That should read more like
The average user is frustrated and angry with Windows, but also unaware of any alternatives - making
them even more angry and frustrated
They find basic things like, for example, being able to turn the computer on and have it start up just like when it was new, just don't work. So they put up with it, not knowing what is wrong or how to fix it. After a flurry of these things going wrong, they are so worn down they just have to try to accept this is that way "computers" are.
Because when Firefox crashes people will send the bug reports to Microsoft. There is no incentive for Microsoft to bundle Firefox, and a very real cost if they do. It just doesn't make sense.
-matt
No, those comparisions are NOT valid. One costs the company money to produce, the other does not. One is physical, the other is not. They are related only in that both are products that someone else came up with. It would cost Microsoft nothing additional to put Firefox on their Windows CDs over what they pay to make the CDs right now. It would cost Microsoft hundreds of dollars per unit to ship a PS3 and a Nintendo with each XBox. How can you say the two are comparable? The comparison would be valid if Playstations and Nintendos were free, had no weight, and took up no physical space in the packaging.
The "copyright infringment is ok" argument comes from people that are trying to rationalise that they aren't doing anything wrong; they are incorrect and they know it.
I was complaining about how MS goes out of their way to make it exceeding difficult to *not* have their software installed on your computer, set to be used by default, and hooked into the OS so that all Windows functions must use it. I was informing you that the GP *also* was saying that, and not what you decided that s/he said.
Ultimately, the reason that computer users are "stupid" is because so many of them try quite hard to not learn anything. To do a real world comparision, the way most computer users are is like having the same problem with your car every week, being capable of fixing it in two or three minutes for free, but having to get a mechanic to come and fix it because you never learn the procedure to fix it, even though he tells it to you every time. You can tell someone how to stop a computer from screwing up, how to install a USB device, how to duplex a print job, etc, but a lot of them will never bother to actually learn it.
Providing choice does not equate to the same problem. When I install Linux, I can typically choose between a few programs that do the same thing, right off from the installer. That's not as important as the fact that I can choose to have *no* web browser, from the installer. That is what we were saying to you, and that is the larger problem. Microsoft *doesn't* let you pick the "no program" option anymore.
To me there are arguments for both sides. I don't like the idea of MS putting everyone out of buisness because they include every possible app with windows. But I also would like to have a functional, usefull computer without having to install a hundred different programs. I mean, an argument can be made that MS should only ship the core of the OS since there are other options out there for almost every component of Windows, but I wouldn't want to pay for that.